Getting a lot of questions regarding my criticism of Daniel Craig's clothes. Common questions: "How can you dress if you're muscular?" "Should no one wear skinny suits?" "What about a more modern silhouette?" Let's talk about some of these points. 🧵
Craig often wears clothes that are too tight for his body. This causes the buttoning point to strain across his waist, the lapels to buckle away from the chest, and the coat's collar to lift off his neck.
His right sleeve is often two inches too short. I suspect this is because his bicep is too tight and he is right-handed. When he waves or shakes people's hands, his tight sleeve is prone to riding up on him, leaving him with too much shirt cuff. Happens often at press events.
A good sleeve should hang well, which is to say it should be relatively free from wrinkles. This comes from two things: 1) enough room for the arm inside and 2) sleeve should be pitched correctly for the arm (not too forward or back, relative to how the wearer naturally stands)
It's very much possible to get clothes made for a muscular build that's both flattering and comfortable. These garments don't pucker or pull. (Lebron's trousers bunch at the bottom bc they were tailored for dress shoes and he's wearing sneakers here, but it's otherwise good.)
These clothes will be more comfortable and allow movement. When you feel more comfortable, you will be more stylish. You will also look more at ease, so the clothes will look natural on you. You will be able to hug people without feeling like the center back seam is going to rip.
It's not that skinny suits can't be worn. It's that the cut has to work for your body. Notice Dior and Saint Laurent ads always feature a very slim model. Clothes hang right. By contrast, Craig looks like he had to squeeze into his suit. The effect is more "sausage casing."
Hedi Slimane, who helped kick off the trend for skin tight suits in the late 1990s/ early 2000s, was once the Creative Director of Saint Laurent Paris. And Yves Saint Laurent himself wore very slim suits on occasion. His body was built for it.
As for how you can modernize the suit, there are lots of ways: material, color, silhouette, or styling. Impossible to cover everything here, but the principles for good tailoring still apply to pics below: collar hugs neck, clean lines, no pulling, etc.
Will leave you with one more example. Both men are about the same height and have muscular builds. Craig emphasizes his build by slimming the suit until it looks like he bought the wrong size. The second still has a flattering build (V-shaped silhouette), but has clean lines
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Style lessons from Robert Redford, one of the most stylish men in the last century. 🧵
A tailored jacket continues to be one of the most flattering things you can wear. However, for it to look good, it has to fit right. That means a jacket that bisects you halfway from your collar to the floor when you're in heeled shoes. Also trouser + suit jacket silhouette flows
It also helps to know how to use this visual language, especially with regard to ideas about formality. For instance, a dark business suit cries out for a tie. If you don't want to wear a tie, try a more casual garment, like a sport coat.
Let's start with a test. Here are two tan polo coats. One is machine-made. The other is handmade. Can you guess which is which?
Please answer before moving on. Then you can scroll through the answers to see whether most people got it right.
The first coat is machine-made. It's from an American ready-to-wear company called J. Press. The second is handmade. It's from a London bespoke tailoring house called Anderson & Sheppard.
You can spot the difference by how the edges are finished.
I've seen people here suggest Obama was a stylish president. I couldn't disagree more. Outfits like these read better in 2025, but during the slim-fit, Euro style craze of his presidency, Obama was routinely panned for his "frumpy dad style." See Vanity Fair.
His style transformation really came post-presidency. I suspect, but don't have proof, that this is partly the influence of his wife, who is quite stylish. Even his suits look better now. See clean shoulder line + shirt collar points reaching lapels + nice four-in-hand dimple.
Although it's rarely expressed in outright terms, people often use a very simple heuristic when solving fashion problems: they wish to look rich, which is often disguised as "respectable."
I will show you why this rarely leads to good outfits. 🧵
In 1902, German sociologist Georg Simmel neatly summed up fashion in an essay titled "On Fashion." Fashion, he asserted was simply a game of imitation in which people copy their "social betters." This causes the upper classes to move on, so as to distinguish themselves.
He was right. And his theory explains why Edward VIII, the Duke of Windsor, was the most influential menswear figure in the early 20th century. By virtue of his position and taste, he popularized soft collars, belted trousers, cuffs, Fair Isle sweaters, and all sorts of things.
It's funny to see people imbue traditional men's tailoring with their own prejudices. They assume every man who wore a suit in the far past must be a staunch conservative like them. The truth is much more complicated. 🧵
This bias, of course, stems out of the 1960s and 70s, from which many of our contemporary politics also spring. I don't need to belabor this point because you already know it. The framing is neatly summed up in this Mad Men scene — the rag tag hippie vs man in a suit.
Thus, people assume that men in suits must always be part of the conservative establishment. But this was not always so. The suit was once a working man's garment. When Keir Hardie, founder of the Labour Party, arrived for his first day in Parliament, he wore a suit.
There's no "right" or "wrong" answer here, so feel free to go with your gut. I will then give you my views below. 🧵
In men's tailoring, the area below the jacket's buttoning point is colloquially known as the "quarters" among menswear enthusiasts. Or the "front edge" by actual tailors. These terms refer to the edge of the coat, connecting to lapels.
Some suit jackets have very closed quarters, such as you see on the left. In this way, the jacket forms a Y-shaped silhouette.
Other suits have open quarters, such that the front edge sweeps back on the hips, as you see on the right. This forms an X-shaped silhouette.